Hi again. A few days ago I posted about random freezes in Windows XP. Iīve tried basically everything, except buying new hardware, and XP still freezes randomly. Anyway, I think I might have found something...In the system log there are a lot of red circles/warning icons and to the right of these icons it says "ACPI". What does that mean? Obviously something went wrong with that ACPI (whatever that is) so where do I go from here?

http://www.tyan.com/support/html/glossary.html

Thanks, now I know what ACPI is. But how is it related to the lockups? Any ideas? Should I disable ACPI in the BIOS?

More info. The ACPI errors in the system log reads something like this: "ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected address range. This could lead to system instability" Yup, my system is unstable allright. So, what should I do?

Opps, posted with my username, not nick. FYI, JP= dugor. :-)

I don't know if it will help you but it fixed my random freezes without hardware replacement. Check your Windows installed components. If you have MSN IE 6 or later and MS IE 6 or later both installed remove one of them. I don't use MSN IE 6.1 so I unstalled it. Now I have no lockups. There was an article many months ago in one of the computer mags about MSN IE causing crashes in some systems. Removing the program will not cause a problem normally unless you are using a dial up connection. After removal you may have to re establish your dial up connection. I am running road runner and I had no problem removing the program. Good Luck.

Thanks billmele. I think I solved it already though. I flashed the BIOS on my crappy, ultra-low end Matsonic mobo. It was a hassle to find a working bin-file and Award-utility since this fine company isnīt to fond of support or good customer service. Anyway, after the BIOS update I havenīt had neither lockups, nor ACPI errors in the system log. Knock on wood. :-)